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Indie Games Are Not More Focused. They Are Differently Focused.
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<blockquote data-quote="Staffan" data-source="post: 8312058" data-attributes="member: 907"><p>I did not mean that Fate is silly like Blackadder. I mean, Fate was to some degree engineered out of Fudge in order to provide an engine for the Dresden Files RPG, and I wouldn't call Dresden Files silly.</p><p></p><p>My point was that Blackadder has a lot of structural similarity in each episode, and perhaps moreso between each series, in the same way that you can play Fate in many different settings and in different situations, but the system with compels and such push a certain narrative style. I won't say they force it, but the system certainly leans that way. Blackadder was just the first TV show that came to mind that combined superficial differences with structural similarities, because of the way it spans multiple eras.</p><p></p><p>Different systems care about different things, and in doing so they push different narratives. Let's look at two very different games: GURPS and Heroquest.</p><p></p><p>GURPS is a highly simulationist game. If you want to know if you can endure a particular hardship, you look at things like your Health, Will, various advantages and disadvantages, situational things like fatigue, and so on. You then make a roll based on these reasonably objective inputs to see how well you do.</p><p></p><p>Hero Quest, on the other hand, is more flexible. Among other things, Abilities can be more nebulous things, like personality traits, and personal values and such.</p><p></p><p>In GURPS, Sam and Frodo are toast in Shelob's lair. They're tiny little hobbitses, and Shelob is an ancient arachnid demi-god who knows every inch of her lair, and who is among the mightiest beings of the age. They're goners. Had they been mightier heroes, like Elrond or Gandalf, they might have had a chance, but no way they can do it as they are.</p><p></p><p>But in Hero Quest, Sam can find the strength in his loyalty to Frodo and manage to scare off Shelob by wounding her with Sting and then rescue Frodo and bring him through the lair. In other words, the two games are designed to tell very different stories.</p><p></p><p>Or take another example: Vampire 5th edition. Whenever you make a roll in V5, you replace some of your dice with Hunger dice, depending on how hungry you are. If you get certain results on these dice, you can either get a Bestial Failure or a Messy Crit, which both represent the vampiric Beast affecting you. Instead of just pushing a mook trying to bar your way to the side, you throw them across the room, breaking multiple bones in the process, because they DARED trying to stop you. This shows how vampires aren't fully human anymore, and have impulses that are hard to control. Keeping yourself well fed placates the Beast to some extent, but it won't be fully satisfied unless you drink a human to the death (non-lethal feeding can't take you below Hunger 1). Vampire always had "A monster I am, lest a monster I become" as one of its themes, but it hasn't really been shown mechanically until now.</p><p></p><p></p><p>Yes, you can have clerics and paladins gaining power from ideals or the like. But it still means that you get power from devotion somehow, which is still a poor fit for many settings. Clerics also play a very important meta-game role as healers, which means many parties don't feel complete without them. The importance of this role has waxed and waned over the years, but you still have the archetypal party consisting of a Fighter, a Cleric, a Wizard, and a Rogue. You can probably fill the Fighter role equally well with a paladin or a barbarian, and a bard or druid can sub in for a wizard, but the cleric role is much harder to replace. Not impossible by any means, but harder.</p><p></p><p>And even if you have ideal-based clerics, they still use the very divine-flavored cleric spell list. You have spell like Spirit Guardians, Conjure Celestial, Divination, and Guardian of Faith. You have class abilities like Channel <strong>Divinity</strong> and <strong>Divine</strong> Intervention. De-goding the cleric would be quite a lot of work.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Staffan, post: 8312058, member: 907"] I did not mean that Fate is silly like Blackadder. I mean, Fate was to some degree engineered out of Fudge in order to provide an engine for the Dresden Files RPG, and I wouldn't call Dresden Files silly. My point was that Blackadder has a lot of structural similarity in each episode, and perhaps moreso between each series, in the same way that you can play Fate in many different settings and in different situations, but the system with compels and such push a certain narrative style. I won't say they force it, but the system certainly leans that way. Blackadder was just the first TV show that came to mind that combined superficial differences with structural similarities, because of the way it spans multiple eras. Different systems care about different things, and in doing so they push different narratives. Let's look at two very different games: GURPS and Heroquest. GURPS is a highly simulationist game. If you want to know if you can endure a particular hardship, you look at things like your Health, Will, various advantages and disadvantages, situational things like fatigue, and so on. You then make a roll based on these reasonably objective inputs to see how well you do. Hero Quest, on the other hand, is more flexible. Among other things, Abilities can be more nebulous things, like personality traits, and personal values and such. In GURPS, Sam and Frodo are toast in Shelob's lair. They're tiny little hobbitses, and Shelob is an ancient arachnid demi-god who knows every inch of her lair, and who is among the mightiest beings of the age. They're goners. Had they been mightier heroes, like Elrond or Gandalf, they might have had a chance, but no way they can do it as they are. But in Hero Quest, Sam can find the strength in his loyalty to Frodo and manage to scare off Shelob by wounding her with Sting and then rescue Frodo and bring him through the lair. In other words, the two games are designed to tell very different stories. Or take another example: Vampire 5th edition. Whenever you make a roll in V5, you replace some of your dice with Hunger dice, depending on how hungry you are. If you get certain results on these dice, you can either get a Bestial Failure or a Messy Crit, which both represent the vampiric Beast affecting you. Instead of just pushing a mook trying to bar your way to the side, you throw them across the room, breaking multiple bones in the process, because they DARED trying to stop you. This shows how vampires aren't fully human anymore, and have impulses that are hard to control. Keeping yourself well fed placates the Beast to some extent, but it won't be fully satisfied unless you drink a human to the death (non-lethal feeding can't take you below Hunger 1). Vampire always had "A monster I am, lest a monster I become" as one of its themes, but it hasn't really been shown mechanically until now. Yes, you can have clerics and paladins gaining power from ideals or the like. But it still means that you get power from devotion somehow, which is still a poor fit for many settings. Clerics also play a very important meta-game role as healers, which means many parties don't feel complete without them. The importance of this role has waxed and waned over the years, but you still have the archetypal party consisting of a Fighter, a Cleric, a Wizard, and a Rogue. You can probably fill the Fighter role equally well with a paladin or a barbarian, and a bard or druid can sub in for a wizard, but the cleric role is much harder to replace. Not impossible by any means, but harder. And even if you have ideal-based clerics, they still use the very divine-flavored cleric spell list. You have spell like Spirit Guardians, Conjure Celestial, Divination, and Guardian of Faith. You have class abilities like Channel [B]Divinity[/B] and [B]Divine[/B] Intervention. De-goding the cleric would be quite a lot of work. [/QUOTE]
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